Monday, August 12, 2013

Gonna Make Me Lose My Mind

DMX has been running through my head all day today. It was that crazy today.

I planned to can
the green beans today, and be done by noon. My B's mom came
over to help, and we had them cleaned and going in jars in NO time.

Then
DD reminded me she had to be at the HS at 1 pm for pictures for band
and right at that moment my boys came in screaming that the bees were
swarming. DH went outside, and sure enough, HUGE swarm from my hive.

And they chose a spot in a tree 30-40 ft in the air. This totally altered our plans for the day. B's mom took DD to the school for her band pictures, and we set right to work getting that swarm collected!

Step one was suiting up and cutting down the tree.

Thankfully, the tree didn't crush our hive body! You would think having been dropped 30 feet to the ground would have made the bees mad, but nope...they kept on buzzing around, completely ignoring us in their mad dash to locate their queen.

Steps 1-50 were to cut the branches, shake bees into the box, scoop bees from the ground, and repeat, until we had the box MOSTLY filled with bees, and hopefully the queen as well.

Then we took a break, as our suits were like saunas! After 2 tall glasses of water and about 30 minutes later, we went outside to check....and I guess we DID get the queen in the box, because the rest of the bees had just marched right in!